Hello again, Bizymoms! Happy to be back. Let’s take a step back this week and talk about where your ideas will come from. No time for wellspring meditation courses? Can’t quite fit that MFA into your planner without causing a thermonuclear meltdown? Never fear! There are lots of good books with exercises designed to spur ideas, but my advice is simply pay attention.

What makes you laugh is as likely as anything to produce a story: my sister phoned a few years ago to tell me she’d just returned from a wedding. Prime teary time was upon the scene when she leaned over to her five year-old and whispered, “The ring bearer is coming.” He heard “ring bear” and promptly panicked. Ran screaming up the aisle, he did, the poor little bugger. No, my sister didn’t think it was amusing when the wedding came to a screeching halt as she chased him down in her heels, but well, I sure did hearing about it. When I put down the phone I began writing THE RING BEAR.

Take suggestions: After hearing me read THE RING BEAR, a sixth-grader wrote me a thank-you note in which she said, “I could TOTALLY relate, because I made the same mistake when I was little with “Flour Girl,” instead of “FLOWER girl.” And so another book was born. (Thanks, Amber Pasternak!)

Ask questions: my son came home one day from school and asked me, “Daddy, why was six afraid of seven? (One second pause, then…) BECAUSE SEVEN ATE NINE! Har Har He He Ha!” I asked why, and he had no answer. So I wrote 7 ATE 9.

We were folding socks one day and came down to one loner with no match. It looked utterly forlorn, so I asked my son what it was going to do without its brother. He considered the matter gravely, but had no answer. And so I wrote JACQUES & SPOCK.

Okay, one more: was discussing an acquaintance with my wife, someone with a few, well, issues. When we were done, I shrugged and said — what I meant to say was, “We’ve all got issues” — but for some reason I said, “We’ve all got holes.” After which I said, “Boy, if you had enough problems, you’d look like Swiss Cheese.” After which I thought, “Hey, what if a Swiss Cheese thought her holes were problems?” And so I wrote my first book, CHEESE LOUISE! Which is pretty much why I’m writing to you today.

Best and thanks for reading,

David Michael Slater
www.davidmicahelslater.com

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